Inked Adonis: Chapter 33

I stand at the end of my bed, stunned into a reverent silence.

I was gone for so long. Ten days of shoveling shit and tying up loose ends in the frigid cold of Moscow might as well have been ten years. So long that I almost forgot what would be waiting for me when I came home.

Or rather, who would be waiting.

I say “almost,” because, between permanently evicting a mole and his two cohorts from the planet, I had time each and every one of those ten nights to miss Nova.

Afterward, I had even more time to think about what a mindfuck it was to miss anyone at all. It’s been a long time since that concept factored into any of my equations. Even before Katerina and I called our doomed marriage quits.

But standing here, the sight of Nova sprawled in the center of my bed, wearing nothing but a white camisole and panties, there’s no denying it.

I missed her.

It’s all I can do not to climb into bed beside her and do something stupid, like tell her exactly that. But I stink of secrets and airplanes and vodka.

Ignoring my burning need, I go to the shower. I crank the heat until the bathroom steams up like a sauna and my skin scalds. I need to raze the last few days from my pores.

The trip was successful; I wouldn’t be back Stateside if it hadn’t been. But betrayal always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I don’t regret what I did to the traitor and his accomplices, and given the thorough way I dismembered and disposed of them, I’ll never have to think of them again.

Still, I scrub at myself a little harder. I want to leave that bloody business in Russia.

I don’t want to touch Nova like this.

I’m not satisfied until my skin is red and raw and fresh. Only then do I turn off the water and towel off. I don’t bother with clothes as I pad across the dark bedroom and finally slide in next to her.

The sheets smell like her vanilla skin and the mattress is warm from her body. The second her back brushes against my chest, I exhale—for the first time in ten days, it feels like.

I breathe in her hair and the softness of her skin under my hands. I trace the curve of her body along her bare thigh and over her hip. Her silk camisole shifts like water under my fingers, making way for me to follow the toned stretch of her stomach to her breasts.

As my fingers circle her nipples, she shudders in my arms. A sigh slips between her lips, and I’ve never been this hard.

My erection presses between her thighs, and we both exhale again. She feels like silk everywhere—soft and delicate. After almost two weeks of brutality and cold, she is fucking heaven.

“S…Samuil?” Her voice is thick with sleep. She twists in my arms, her body pressing back into mine like she wants to make sure I’m real. Like she’s checking this isn’t a dream.

If it is, I’d rather not wake up.

Her lips part to say something, but I catch her mouth with mine before she can. I sweep my tongue across her full lip and part her, then dive inside to taste more of her.

She melts in my arms. Her hips writhe against me, and all I can think is, So much for rest. I thought I was tired on the plane, but my body is alive now. Wide awake.

I roll Nova onto her back, never breaking the kiss. My hand slips between our bodies, one finger just beginning to dip into the wet heat between her thighs⁠—

—when there’s a sharp, sudden pain in my bottom lip.

“Blyat’.” I pull away from her as the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. “Nova⁠—”

“Don’t you dare.” She shoves at my chest, and I let her force me back onto my knees because something in the feral gleam of her eyes is alarming me. “It’s been ten days, Samuil. Ten days! And you climb into bed without a word and think—what? That I’ll spread my legs and welcome you home?”

I have a strong feeling she doesn’t want me to say, Yes, that’s exactly what I thought.

She snaps on the bedside lamp, but the light does nothing to shatter my delusion. If anything, seeing her in the warm glow is making it even harder to focus on how pissed she is at me right now.

Even with her flared nostrils and disheveled hair, she looks magnificent.

“I texted.”

She scoffs and turns away from me, her teeth grinding together. “Three times. You texted three times in ten days. And there was no information. I didn’t know where you were or when you’d be back. I didn’t even know if you were—” Her voice hitches and dies.

“Krasavitsa—”

I reach for her, but she jerks away and leaps to her feet. She paces, half-naked, at the foot of the bed, too beautiful to be so angry and so sad.

“I didn’t even know you were okay or if you were leaving. I didn’t get to say, ‘Have a nice trip’ or ‘See you next fall’ or ‘Are you ever planning to come back or should I find someone to cover your half of this astronomical rent?’”

I stand, using all of my self-control to keep my hands to myself. “I own the penthouse.”

“Not to mention,” she continues, ignoring me, “you didn’t even tell me you were leaving in the first place! I just woke up one day to you, gone. You left the freaking country and didn’t feel like that was worth mentioning to me, your—” She stumbles over a potential label for herself. “You should have told me!”

Even as Nova says it, I’m not sure she’s right. I’d rather her have as little connection to the shit I had to deal with in Russia as possible. The less she knows, the better. I kept it hidden for her sake. Same reason I scrubbed myself half to death in the shower.

She’s too pure to be tainted by the evil things I have to do to keep her safe.

“I’m sorry you’re upset.”

I realize immediately that is not what she wants to hear. She whirls on me, eyes wild. “Of course I’m upset! Do you know how horrible, how humiliating, it was to hear about you being gone from your brother, of all people?”

Ilya…? What the fuck? I only have the one brother, but this is the first I’m hearing of another run-in. The only reason I’m not racing out of this room to pin that mudak to the wall by his throat is because Nova is perfectly safe in front of me.

“God, he was so smug about it, too.” Her lip curls. “Also, has he ever been formally tested? His psychopathic tendencies are off the charts. Modern science would have a field day with him.”

I can’t help but smile. Ilya has fooled a lot of people over the years, but it’s nice to know Nova sees behind the mask.

She’s still ranting, cursing me and my entire family lineage by the sounds of it, when I snag her by the arm.

“Let me go!” she grits out. But her struggling only makes my situation worse—or better, depending on which specific part of my body you ask.

“Not until you calm down.”

“I am calm! Considering I thought you were dead or gone or… or abandoned me—” Her chest hitches again, and I feel her shudder with a matching sob. “You can’t do that. It’s not right, Sam. I thought—” She pirouettes in my arms, her golden brown eyes swimming with tears. “You can’t leave me like that.”

“I wasn’t,” I whisper. “I wasn’t leaving you, krasavitsa. I swore I never would.”

Her forehead falls to my chest and she wraps her arms around my body. “How was I supposed to know that?”

More like, How could you not?

I’ve broken all of my rules for Nova. She’s living under my roof and sleeping in my bed and weaseling her way into every one of my thoughts. She’s why I wake up and she’s why I can’t sleep. She’s why I go to Russia to kill traitorous men and she’s why I come back home afterward.

She’s become my reason for everything. Whether she knows it or not, whether she likes it or not, it’s true.

Nova Pierce is my why.

I stroke her hair and hold her until her shoulders ease down and her breathing is steady. “What kind of fool would ever leave you?” I whisper against her temple.

It’s not a real question. I didn’t even mean to say it.

But Nova stiffens anyway.

I pull her away, catching her chin so I can look into her eyes. “Nova… tell me. Who?”

Whoever it is, I’ll kill him. His bloody death will make what I just did in Russia look as innocent as fingerpainting.

Glistening tears roll down her cheeks. “My mom and dad had a huge fight one night, and she just… disappeared. For months. Without so much as a word.” She looks down at the floor and the tears fall splattering to her feet. “When I found out you left, I thought… maybe…”

I shake my head and pass my knuckle under her eye. “I would never.”

I’m not one for grand promises, but this doesn’t feel grand. It feels simple.

I left, and she cried, and I don’t want her to cry.

Simple as that.

Sighing, I tow her back into the bed. To my surprise, she lets me—and as she stretches long against my body, her thigh hooked over my hip, I’m prepared to show her exactly how much I don’t plan to leave her.

But if I want to keep Nova around—and, God help me, I think I do—I owe her an explanation. I owe her words. Not just touches. Not just deeds done under cover of shadow.

Those things might be enough for me, but she needs something different. She needs more.

So I’ll give it to her.

I’ll change for her. Just so long as she stays.

“I’m sorry. I truly am.” I kiss her forehead more tenderly than I’ve ever done anything in my whole cursed fucking life. “I was in Moscow.”

She nods and sniffles. “Yeah, I dragged that much out of Myles after I accidentally wandered into Ilya’s office. But what were you doing there?”

“Business.” I brush her hair away from her face. “Bratva business.”

She goes perfectly still against me, and I can only imagine what she’s thinking. The darkest places her mind could go probably aren’t dark enough.

Her breath is hot against my chest. I feel it coming in quick, desperate bursts. Her heart is thrumming.

I feel the moment slipping away, and all I want is to hold her close.

So I give her words. Stupid, reckless words I’ve never said to anyone else. Because I’ve never meant them before.

“I missed you, Nova,” I whisper. “I thought of you every day and every night. You can’t know how sorry I am that the tears in your eyes are because of me.”

She raises her chin an inch and it feels like a reward.

And so I keep going.

“I left because I had to. To protect my business, yes, but more importantly… I had to go to protect you.” I clutch her tighter, my hand smoothing along the curve of her spine. “You’ve seen it for yourself: my brother is a dangerous man. I want to protect you from him, but I have to play the long game.”

She lifts her teary eyes to mine. “I don’t like playing games.”

“Business is a game. The Bratva is, too. I have to play to win. But I assure you—” I tuck a finger under her chin and pull her face up to mine. “—you are not a game to me. This—us; you and me—is not a game.”

“Do you promise?”

I catch her mouth with mine and kiss her slow and deep. She doesn’t bite me again, but I feel the ghost of it in my lip—a reminder of how careful I need to be with her. Of how easily I could lose whatever this fragile thing between us is.

As my hands trail down her body, she melts into me. I roll her over and finally part her legs around my waist. She’s wet and ready, and she cries out wordlessly as I take her in a single stroke.

I leave my kisses on her body like silent vows, and she clings to me as though she plans to hold me to them.

“Sam…” She touches my face, her eyes wide and vulnerable as her body tightens around me.

I follow after her, spilling into her until we’re both spent—sweaty and entangled in the sheets and each other.

She’s asleep before the sweat has dried, her body still hot with her orgasm, her fingers still intertwined with mine.

It’s a level of trust few people have shown me. The problem is, I already know I can’t return it. Not in full. Not in the way she wants.

There are things I can’t tell her. Secrets I have to hide.

If only to keep her around a little longer.